FC Barcelona Lassa comes off an underwhelming season in which the club did not reach its goals. Barcelona handed the coaching reins to Georgios Bartzokas, but a series of severe injuries early in the season did not allow the club to find its rhythm and adjust to the new, round-robin Turkish Airlines EuroLeague format. Despite winning four of its first six games, Barcelona finished the EuroLeague regular season with a 12-18 record, which was good only for 11th place. That meant that Barcelona missed the EuroLeague playoffs for the first time since the 2004-05 season. Among the few highlights was scoring king Juan Carlos Navarro becoming the first man to score 4,000 career points in the EuroLeague. Barcelona did not do well in the Spanish League either; the team ranked sixth at the end of the regular season with a 22-10 record before being eliminated by eventual champion Valencia Basket in the playoffs. Barcelona missed the Spanish League semifinals for the first time since 2005. Barcelona also made it to the Copa del Rey semifinals, but Valencia stood in its way there, too. Coach Bartzokas was fired at the end of the season, so a new chapter starts for Barcelona, one of the most successful clubs in European history.

EuroLeague

SEASON

COMPETITION

RECORD

FINISH

2016-17

EuroLeague

12-18

Regular Season

2015-16

EuroLeague

16-13

Playoffs

2014-15

EuroLeague

21-7

Playoffs

2013-14

EuroLeague

23-6

Semifinals

2012-13

EuroLeague

25-6

Semifinals

2011-12

EuroLeague

19-2

Semifinals

2010-11

EuroLeague

14-6

Playoffs

2009-10

EuroLeague

20-2

Champion

2008-09

EuroLeague

18-5

Semifinals

2007-08

EuroLeague

13-10

Playoffs

2006-07

EuroLeague

14-9

Playoffs

2005-06

EuroLeague

14-11

Semifinals

2004-05

EuroLeague

11-9

Top 16

2003-04

EuroLeague

14-6

Top 16

2002-03

EuroLeague

18-4

Champion

2001-02

EuroLeague

14-6

Top 16

2000-01

EuroLeague

8-4

Eighthfinals

TOTAL:

274-124

History

FC Barcelona is one of the biggest and most-respected sporting clubs in the world, and its basketball section has been important to its legacy. The club began its haul of trophies in the 1940s, a decade that saw it lift the Copa del Rey five times. Barcelona’s next era of greatness came in the 1980s, led by Nacho Solozabal, Chicho Sibilio and Juan Antonio "Epi" San Epifanio. Barcelona reached the 1984 EuroLeague final before falling to Roma and then won the Saporta Cup in both 1985 and 1986 plus the Korac Cup the following season. Despite its successes, Barcelona still longed for EuroLeague glory. The club added Audie Norris and made it to three straight EuroLeague Final Fours from 1989 to 1991, but lost to eventual champion Split each time – including twice in the championship game. Barcelona returned three more times to the Final Four in the 1990s alone, but came up short each time. In 1999, Barcelona won a second Korac Cup, but 2000 brought with it more Final Four disappointment. That all changed in 2003 when, with the city hosting the Final Four at Palau Sant Jordi, the great Dejan Bodiroga teamed with Gregor Fucka, Sarunas Jasikevicius and Juan Carlos Navarro under Coach Svetislav Pesic to carry Barca past Benetton Treviso for its first EuroLeague crown. Barcelona returned to the Final Four again in 2006 and won the Copa del Rey in 2007. In the 2008-09 season, with Xavi Pascual as head coach, Barcelona won yet another Spanish League title and returned to the Final Four, but lost again to CSKA Moscow. The 2009-10 season was a memorable one for Barcelona as the likes of Navarro, Ricky Rubio, Erazem Lorbek and Pete Mickeal helped put the team among the greatest EuroLeague champions ever with an incredible 20-2 record. Panathinaikos Athens stopped Barcelona in the 2011 playoffs and prevented the club from returning to a Palau Sant Jordi Final Four. Olympiacos Piraeus knocked Barca out in the 2012 Final Four in Istanbul and Real Madrid stood in the club's way in the 2013 and 2014 EuroLeague semifinals. Even so, Barcelona won the Spanish League and Copa double in 2011, another league trophy in 2012, the Copa in 2013 and the Spanish championship in 2014. Barcelona was one win away from making it to the 2016 Final Four after leading 1-2 in its best-of-five playoffs series against Lokomotiv Kuban Krasnodar, but did not get the ticket to Berlin. Nevertheless Barcelona has been to the Final Four 14 times since 1988. The club, however, has only added one Spanish SuperCup title in the last three years and that will be the next goal for a new-look squad this season: to challenge for every title available and fight for a third continental crown.